


Shadows and Light

by rainstormcolors



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Gen, Suicidal Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:13:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23297581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainstormcolors/pseuds/rainstormcolors
Summary: A darker Kaiba brothers story, DSoD-based, in the shadows of Gozaburo. There is suicidal theming.
Relationships: Kaiba Mokuba & Kaiba Seto
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	Shadows and Light

I

The innards of the house had been painted with the brushstrokes of darkness, and Seto was two months shy of thirteen as he crept through the hallway. And he could feel the house breathing. All the spiraling thoughts, the endless lessons and the things he can’t remember, how the lines of text inside a book became alive and monstrous, swallowing caffeine pills until he vomited, until his eyesight blurred, all the fantasies of that man burning alive, of taking a knife from the kitchen and stabbing him to death in his sleep. There was knife in Seto’s hand now and he crept to that man’s door. When had he gotten the knife? The thump inside his chest burned and he was swallowing air. This was it. And his hand took the doorknob and he began to turn it.

The door was locked.

He kept his hand resting on the knob for a moment, and the world was silent. Seto began to laugh. The sound was soft at first, but his voice clawed and bubbled harder, and his free hand jumped to his mouth to silence himself, and he realized then that he was trembling and that tears were spilling from his eyes as he stumbled backwards and crumbled to the floor. And the knife was so close to his own throat. And the house was quaking. It was swallowing him.

When he woke up in his bed the next morning, he didn’t know whether it had been real or a dream. An opalescent blade of sunshine spilled from the shut curtains split the space of his bedroom in two and the shadows seemed edged in purple.

And he felt pieces of himself breaking off. And the shapes of the world changed. Something inky and poisonous was leeching into him, and the core of himself was growing harder and colder by the day. What was happening to him?

If it was real, it had been the last time he ever cried.

He never did find the knife.

II

The idea had drifted on the edges of Seto’s mind, and he regretted it the moment he placed the reader upon his head like some techno crown. The holographic screen was darkly iridescent before uploading the memories of that man and Seto watched as his face emerged from the dark. His step-father’s face in a square of white, the stats floating from Seto’s own brain.

If he’d regretted placing the reader on his head, he still walked to the entrance of the hologram arena and he wasn’t sure why. His colors reflected back to him from the metal doors.

The room that poured into the arena was pale and bare.

It was ghost. The shape of that man, his form, his aura was a ghost. Seto stared at Gozaburo. And Gozaburo peered back. His eyes were cold and like mud.

Seto swallowed, clenched his teeth, and the room and Gozaburo faded away instantly into black, into nothing.

III

The naked room filled the space like liquid, and Gozaburo in his maroon suit turned his head from the side to face the boy. His shape was harsh against the pale room; the boy’s shape was harsh against the pale room.

Mokuba stared. His body was locked. His breaths became deeper; the weight in his chest was heavy, was unbearable. Gozaburo peered back at him with unreadable eyes. And then Mokuba materialized a gun in his hand.

He shot Gozaburo once, the sound crisp and penetrating, and he struck Gozaburo’s shoulder. Mokuba flinched as he watched his step-father stumble and grasp at the wound. When Gozaburo brought his eyes back to Mokuba, Mokuba shot him again in the chest. And again in the head. And Gozaburo was a heap on the floor. Except it wasn’t really Gozaburo.

A tremor moved through Mokuba. As he released the gun, it vanished in the air. The sound crawled out of Mokuba in fragments at first and tears began to drip. Gozaburo’s body had vanished as well.

Mokuba crumbled to his knees. His insides boiled as he sobbed and sobbed. Everything was spiraling and splitting.

_Why didn’t you get help?! Why didn’t you try getting help, Nii-sama?!_

_Why did you leave me?!_

IV

When Seto returned home a day later, Mokuba handed Kaiba Corporation back to him without comment. He asked how the trip went, asked if Seto had found Atem, asked if he won the duel.

There was something peaceful and soft inside Seto’s words, and Mokuba was disgusted.

They fell back into routine, quietly in rooms together. Mokuba watched Seto work. Seto watched Mokuba eat the snacks the maid would bring. Mokuba didn’t say a thing about it.

In a sudden burst one day, Mokuba deleted the Atem AI and Gozaburo AI programs from the company’s computer system, teeth clenched as he watched the data disintegrate into ether. If Seto had discovered he’d done this, he never let on that he did.

The quiet gesture of bringing someone coffee or bringing someone juice was shared between them. There were quiet _thanks_ and quiet _thank you_ s. The softness of peeking over to see what the other was doing as they set the drink down beside them.

He dreamed about it sometimes. It wasn’t exactly the same: he had dreams of finding his brother hanging himself.

But Mokuba didn’t say a word about it. Not for years.

The world was heavy. There were shadows seeping into his mind, becoming louder.

Seto had been living for all these years, and they’d been sharing company, and Seto had times of isolating himself but he seemed better than he’d been before. Somehow there had been so much peace held inside his words back then, like pinpricks of lights glowing inside a bottle.

They were inside his brother’s office, surrounded by glass and indigo sky and a moonless hum.

And so Mokuba asked him, “Do you still get those kinds of thoughts?”

Seto stopped work at his monitor. He looked to Mokuba sitting by the window, who was looking at nothing in particular. And Seto looked away again and he answered back gently, “Not as badly as I used to.”

It had been like running over broken glass back then, towards that bright thing.

The world was heavy.

 _I’m sorry I’ve let you down_ , was hanging in Seto’s head. Because he too hadn’t spoken a word about it in years.

“What should I do?” Mokuba asked. _I’d rather paint the walls with my brains and a shotgun than go to therapy_ , he thought.

But he listened to Seto when Seto said, “Get help.”

_Get help._


End file.
